


i know the pieces fit cause i watched them fall away

by jiunnie



Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Bondage and Discipline, Chronic Illness, Comfort, Domestic, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Drugs, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Illness, Masochism, Medical, Medicine, References to Illness, Rock Stars, Rock and Roll, Sadism, Self-Harm, Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-31 01:04:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6449293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiunnie/pseuds/jiunnie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>mino the medicine undergrad, taehyun the rockstar on the high road to hell. and try as he might, the things that mino will never be able to fix.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i know the pieces fit cause i watched them fall away

**Author's Note:**

> based on taehyun & mino's teasers for EXIT but it'll get more obvious later on  
> (meant to be a one-shot but it got too monstrously long so i'll be updating in chapters. it's almost fully written which honestly i should be shot for considering i have 3 essays due ugh)

but I watched them fall away  
**// mildewed and smoldering**

 

The first time Mino sees it happen the sight freezes him in his tracks, his breath caught in his chest.

 

A heartbeat passes as blood rushes to his head, then he's scrambling towards Taehyun, tearing his sweater off himself as he drops to his knees. Taehyun is, ridiculously enough, laughing.

 

"What the fuck did you do," Mino shouts, frantic. Then, just as loudly: "no--don't even fucking reply, just fucking breathe-"

 

On the floor by the sink, Taehyun's lies in a semi-fetal position, his head tucked into the crook of his elbow, a crimson pool spreading quickly under it.

 

Sweater in hand and ready, Mino suddenly realises there’s nothing to staunch. Where is the injury, he thinks blankly, where is it, damn it--

 

At that moment, Taehyun moves his head. Not much, just enough that Mino sees his eyes are half-closed.

 

“...cut,” Taehyun is saying, but Mino isn’t able to make out the rest of his mumbling.

 

“Slowly, please,” Mino begs, trying to keep his voice even. His knees are turning moist from the blood even as he feels them start to slip on the tiles.

 

“Fell," Taehyun bites out, followed by what is probably meant to be another laugh. "Hit my head."

 

And then Mino realises--he’s lying on it, the cut or whatever it is--“I’m going to lift you up, okay?”

 

Without waiting for a reply, he slides one arm under the curve of Taehyun’s neck and the other around his waist, intending to turn him over unto his own lap. In a sudden burst of energy, Taehyun begins to yell.

 

“Don’t touch me,” he says, curling up further into himself, cold clammy hands clawing against Mino’s arms. Mino feels so helpless he thinks he’s going to cry.

 

“You’re being stupid,” he yells back, but makes sure to lift Taehyun as gently as he can. Once settled on Mino’s lap, Taehyun squeezes his eyes shut again and buries his head into the space where Mino’s tshirt ends and jeans begin.

 

It is then that Mino sees the extent of the damage. It’s not even that big a gash, but it is bleeding an awful lot and at a rate that’s making Mino’s stomach turn. He presses the bunched-up sweater in his fist against the wound firmly; the bleeding doesn’t let up.

 

“How are you feeling?” Mino says, free hand caressing the hair splayed across Taehyun’s forehead, low voice not betraying his own panic and the way the lump that has lodged in his throat is throbbing painfully. He’s slowly losing feeling in in his legs.

 

“Taehyun I think we need to go get help--”

 

“Pills,” Taehyun mumbles, and Mino almost thinks he hears a _sorry_ somewhere in between.

 

“Get the pills,” Taehyun exhales against his stomach, and that’s how he finds himself fumbling a drawer open, rummaging in it to emerge with a fistful of packets, the drugs that are meant to hold Taehyun together a sweaty mess in his hand.

 

“Which ones,” Mino says as he returns to Taehyun, still in the same position Mino left him in when he carried him to the couch earlier. The distinct, terrible sensation of being a thoroughly inadequate medical student suddenly seizes him.

 

“Which ones,” Mino says again when Taehyun doesn’t respond, this time a plea bleeding through his composure. He looks at the pills again and his head spins; he knows what they are, somewhat, but the thought that Taehyun needs to take them is getting lost in the confusion of his mind. _This one for clotting of  blood, this one for the prevention of the breakdown of blood clots, this one for…? This one for? This is what is keeping Taehyun together?_

 

  * -



 

The reason Mino is at first so stunned at Taehyun just lying there is that Taehyun is never just staying still for Mino to look at. it's always in a blur of action that Mino remembers Taehyun--Taehyun frantically scribbling (or crossing out) on stacks of score sheets; Taehyun stretched out on his back on the floor, guitar on his chest, fingers a blur against the strings; Taehyun hunched over the piano with his eyes squeezed shut, hands dancing along its monochrome keys; Taehyun throwing back his head laughing as he tosses back another shot, or inhaling yet again with his teeth tight around his cigarette, slow, nicotine-tinged exhales into Mino’s mouth as he grabs his cheek and kisses him, hard.

 

Mino wonders if he would ever see Taehyun face as he imagines it to be, precious and pure and so beautiful it would make his heart ache.

 

They met in winter the previous year, when Mino was still a fresh sophomore ready to face another school year, and Taehyun in the midst of tearing his to shreds. Mino, still unfazed by his first taste of what was to be his life for the next five years, was taking his usual weekend weekend at the watering hole just round the corner of the hostel.

 

"Don't get used to this life," Seunghoon was saying, smirking. Just a year above Mino, Seunghoon already bore the trademark pastiness of the upperclassmen ghosts of the school, his pale face even paler in the cutting light of the bar and scrunching up as he emptied his glass.

 

"Fuck, even alcohol tastes like surgery."

 

Mino laughed. "Please don't ever graduate."

 

“I’m working on that.” He glanced over Mino's shoulder, eyeing two girls in the midst of saying goodbye to each other.

 

"Damn the one who's leaving is the hot one…” Mino almost offered his differing opinion. 

 

“No matter. Practice makes perfect."

 

Standing up, Mino pushed Seunghoon towards the pair. "I'll see you in two months then?"

 

"Don't count on it, I've got my priorities straight. As you know."

 

He stalked off, but not before tracing a line lightly along Mino's back with alternating fingers as always. Mino duly smacked his hand away.

 

With Seunghoon gone Mino considered his options. It's not that he never drank alone, but Seunghoon was almost right, the alcohol _did_ bear the faint taste of over-sanitised surgery theatres in the few nerve-wrecking moments before the actual surgeon comes in to start the operation.

 

Besides, no one around in particular was catching his attention, the place being uncharacteristically empty for a Saturday night. (Then again, college weekends start on Thursdays, but you're too young to know that, Seunghoon did always say)

 

So he left. Ducking into the side alley where he parked his bike, Mino shrugged on the thick leather jacket he uses in place of a coat on days he hits the road. Just as he swung one leg over it to mount it, however, something by the back door of the bar rustled.

 

A figure crouched on the floor, their face in their knees, crying.

 

Well... it’s not like Mino could have revved his engine and up and left, not when it was so damn quiet and his bike would shatter the silence, not when the only sound echoing in the alley came from this figure in staggered, muffled sobs, the soft kind guaranteed to break your heart.

 

“Uh,” Mino ventured, still half-mounted on his bike. The crying continued.

 

“Are you… alright?”

 

The figure lifted its--his--head. Mino got only a quick glimpse of unnaturally large eyes framed by a small white face before the boy let his head fall back on his knees again. He mumbled something into his lap as he did so.

 

“Hey.” Mino stepped off his bike and took half a step forward. “Sorry I didn’t catch that, but you’re all right?”

 

The boy looked up again, and Mino saw now why his eyes had looked so strangely large; his pupils were so dilated that his stare was almost completely just darkness. At the corner of his bottom lip a bruise was blossoming into the colour of crushed raspberry.

 

“I said, you’re one of them, great.” For someone in the midst of having a breakdown, the boy spoke in a unnervingly flat tone.

 

“What?” Mino, having never taken kindly to accusations, shot back immediately. “What are you on about?”

 

“Don’t even try to deny,” the boy said, head raised and tone defiant. “You literally just walked out of the bar.”

 

“What has that got to do with anything?”

 

The boy sprang up. “You all should be ashamed of yourselves. Educated but clueless about anything going on. Do you even have any idea what kind of place this is? What kind of people run this place?”

 

Well, wasn’t the night running along just splendidly.

 

“What are you talking about?” And then, his dented ego suddenly springing into action: “At least I’m not the one high as hell right now.”

 

The boy stared at Mino. If it were even possible, his eyes got even darker. Without another word, he turned and walked off.

 

Or tried to, at least. Mino realised, suddenly, how badly the boy was limping. He’d not even moved a couple of steps from Mino.

 

“Wait,” he paused. In the darkness, the boy casted a lonesome silhouette, flanked by hulking buildings on both sides.

 

“Let me look at that.” The shuffling stopped as the boy froze.

 

“You leg. Let me look at it, I might be able to make it better.”

 

Mino was a medical student. They’d taken the oath and all. They couldn’t let a perfectly injured human walk away like that. Never mind this particular human has taken on ignoring this particular display of philanthropy, having resumed limping off into the night.

 

So Mino caught up with him (not a very tough feat, to be fair). Pushed him (lightly, as per requirements) on the floor. Rolled up the leg of the boy’s jeans. On a delicate ankle, a raised mount yielded to Mino’s touch. He hissed slightly as Mino pressed down on the swelling, but Mino was relieved.

 

“It’s just a sprain, fortunately, but we gotta get it patched up or you’ll heal wrongly.” The boy made to get up on his own, but Mino quickly looped one arm under him and hoisted them up together.

 

“Are you crazy? Didn’t you hear what I just said? You’re coming with me, idiot.”

 

  * \-  



 

Mino doesn't remember when it was that he moved in with Taehyun, just that the first night where he brought Taehyun home to his dorm room to bandage Taehyun’s ankle somehow blended into nights bringing Taehyun back to _Taehyun’s_ home, blending into nights Mino falls asleep in Taehyun’s home too exhausted to make his way back, emerging with Mino waking up in Taehyun’s bed all tangled up in sheets and limbs and Taehyun’s hair smelling like powder and smoke.   

 

Waking up like this, the mid-morning light and Taehyun too bright for his bleary eyes, Mino thinks nothing has changed at all; Mino still the medical student under oath, patching wounds up as best as he can, putting things back together as gently as he can.

 

Taehyun’s no longer tied to that bar, not after Mino puts his foot down and insists. Owing Taehyun money for his gigs, they’d refused to pay up, finally pushing him out the door. Taehyun had tripped over the back steps on his way out.

 

“The worse part is,” Taehyun had said as he leaned against the side of Mino’s bed in the dorm, Mino’s mind only half on the conversation as he worked to bind Taehyun’s foot, “the worse part is I have no one to go for supplies now.”

 

He quickly found new sources, naturally, and so many months later everything is still about same--Taehyun still struggling to survive by doing gigs in random bars; still taking his daily doses of psychotropics, still drinking like it’s the air he breathes. Mino has long gotten used to the smell like tobacco everywhere: the bathroom, the sofa, the damn kitchen. Taehyun’s neck and the collar of his crumpled button-up.

 

The bruises too, and the cuts. Mino is drawn to injuries; his eye can’t help but latch on to the sight of nicks and scratches against skin, and Taehyun always delivers. Mino comes to expect Taehyun always looking like he just emerged from a fight at the end of each day.

 

“Why can’t you stay out of trouble, Taehyun…” Mino sighs absently, his hands doing the familiar work of applying antiseptic to Taehyun’s new injuries. A thought occurs to him.

 

“Is the new place trouble?”--or, even worse--“don’t tell me you went back to that place?”

 

“No,” Taehyun mumbles. As usual he’s falling asleep as Mino tends to his cuts.

 

Afterwards Taehyun sits up as Mino is packing away the supplies and presses a kiss to the side of Mino’s head, just where his temple lies. A vein throbs where Taehyun’s lips touched it. Under the three layers he’s wearing, Mino feels his heart warm up, like someone has lit up a small flame in the clearing of his chest.

 

Taehyun stares at Mino. Mino isn’t sure if it’s just that tonight, Taehyun’s pupils look almost normal, almost _vulnerably_ normal, or that the band-aid under Taehyun’s left eye is compressing his eye-bag just so slightly, but it’s at that exact moment that Mino repeats to himself a promise meant for Taehyun.

 

_I’ll take care of you forever. I’ll take care of you forever. You’re mine to take care of forever._

 

“I love you,” he says instead, reaching forward and guiding Taehyun’s head to rest on his shoulder, the rest of Taehyun soft and safe in the tight sphere of his arms. “I love you, okay?”

 

A pause, and the air goes so still for a moment that Mino almost thinks Taehyun has fallen asleep. But Taehyun pulls himself up from Mino’s hold and, each move slow and deliberate, gingerly pushes Mino backwards so his back lays stiff against the floor tiles. Mino is frozen, caught between the last second and the next, chills crawling up his spine as he watches Taehyun finally settle into place on his lap. The friction of jean fabric is all Mino can think about until Taehyun raises his eyes and looks at him, straight, before leaning in and pinning Mino’s arm above his head.

 

Mino barely bites back a groan; he knows to keep silent when Taehyun gets going. Taehyun tugs hard on the arm already in his grip, and deftly brings Mino’s other hand to join it, trapped between cold ground and heatedness of Taehyun’s touch. Mino is breathing so hard his vision is going light.

 

Taehyun falls forward quickly and is soon at Mino’s ear, hissing, _relax, idiot_. But it’s breathy and harsh and almost too needy and does nothing but make every hair along Mino’s neck stand, nerves coming alive like a flame shooting across the surface of his skin. _Relax_ , Taehyun whispers again, _Mino, relax,_ dragging out the syllables so each word sets Mino’s stomach on a cycle; _clench, breathe, repeat_.

 

“Taehyun,” Mino says, voice cracking. He would very much like to tear Taehyun’s button’s off with his teeth and take everything Taehyun is taking his time now to give, to inhale so much of Taehyun that he goes under, his consciousness filled with nothing but Taehyun, too much Taehyun.

 

Instead he focuses on the image of the half of Taehyun’s face that he’s able to see, on the lock of hair falling over Taehyun’s left ear, of the lone, blue blood vessel pulsating on the length of Taehyun’s neck.

 

Taehyun abruptly rises, just slightly, and Mino instinctively shuts his eyes, half-afraid of the full sight of Taehyun. Through the bright blackness, he feels a renewed pressure on his wrists locked above his head as Taehyun leans on them for support; Mino gasps as Taehyun digs his knees into both his inner thighs, forcing his legs apart. His hardness is straining against his jeans in a way that is starting to hurt.

 

A scramble of fingers, and suddenly Mino’s fly is undone; with one hand Taehyun has managed to yank down his jeans slightly. It’s enough for Mino’s dick to spring free. The cold sends a shudder through him and Mino’s eyelids crack open a slit, through which he blinks at Taehyun in a haze. _Don’t you dare,_ Taehyun seems to say, or maybe actually says, but Mino is too preoccupied with the way Taehyun is drawing eights on his abdomen. His skin burns where Taehyun leaves a trace and his stomach tightens even further, and all he can think is _I am going to fucking come_ , _I am fucking going to--_ and Taehyun’s _don’t even think about it, don’t even fucking think about it--_

 

A hand curls itself around his dick, and then suddenly it’s Taehyun’s face too close to his again, his breath mixing in with Mino’s as tiny explosions go off in Mino’s brain at the contact. Suddenly, also, Mino sees that Taehyun is trembling, biting down on his lip as his hand works on jerking Mino off.

 

It is like this, when Taehyun is barely a hair’s breadth away, eyes heavy-lidded and so seemingly bottomless, that Mino steals a moment to look at Taehyun’s face in its entirety. And even then, he holds his breath and concentrates on the break between Taehyun’s forehead and hair, only darting back occasionally to Taehyun’s expression; there’s always something in Taehyun that Mino isn’t able to hold in his gaze, like the pale, quivering Taehyun of this moment would disappear if Mino stared too long or hard.

 

“-Taehyun--” Mino cries, just as his stomach clenches sharply. “Please-”

 

Taehyun sucks in a breath, and releases his hold on Mino’s shaft just as Mino is about to climax.

 

“What the fuck,” Mino bites out, whining. Not losing a beat, Taehyun collapses on Mino, closing the distance between them as he presses himself closer, picking up a steady rhythm in grinding his hips against Mino’s.

 

The rough denim of Taehyun’s jeans against his swollen tip makes Mino squeeze his eyes tight, his toes numbing over the way they did when he’s especially close to coming spectacularly. Taehyun growls. Quickly, he bends and deftly nicks Mino’s lower lip with his teeth, digging his nails into Mino’s forearm as he does. Mino cries out, surprised, and Taehyun quickly dips his head again, this time to suck gently on the drop of blood that has appeared on Mino’s lip. Mino moans and tries to deepen the kiss.

 

“Don’t come unless I say so,” Taehyun warns, pulling apart. His voice is dangerously quiet. “You know how it goes.”

 

Mino can’t answer for how breathless he is. Taehyun halts and shrugs off his jeans, making a show of unbuckling his belt. Mino expects it but his chest still constricts at the anticipation; sure enough, Taehyun clasps the thick leather strip around Mino’s neck and pulls it snug. Mino sees Taehyun’s eyes cloud over with a renewed need as he kneels with his legs apart, facing Mino.

 

“Jerk me off,” Taehyun says, yet Mino understands it to be a plea dressed as a command. His hands, having not done much till now, feel a little dead, but he quickly gets a grip of Taehyun’s dick and gets to work, pace becoming increasingly erratic as he watches Taehyun’s bite back his orgasm. Without warning, Taehyun shoots his load, coating both their stomachs in warm release.

 

“Fuck,” Taehyun exhales, throwing his head back as his chest rises and falls with each breath. Blindly, he makes a grab for Mino’s dick, his nails scraping against Mino’s tip as he tries to. At that brush, Mino shudders and at last comes, too much blood pulsing in his head and everything too sensitive to the touch. For a moment he sees nothing but white. The belt is heavy around his neck.

 

Instead of removing it straight away, Taehyun reaches forward and brushes Mino’s fringe from his damp forehead.

 

“Well done,” he murmurs, combing his fingers through Mino’s hair. “You waited well.”

 

(Afterwards, he takes his time in unhooking the belt, pressing kisses along the ridges it left behind on Mino’s throat.)

  
Yet, as Mino feels himself slip into a sluggish sleep, all he thinks about are Taehyun’s bruises that he has to patch up, and how his own  _i love you_ s are always left hanging. 

_And tomorrow will probably be the same._

**Author's Note:**

> i promise there will be a /real/actual sex thing soon i just really am not too good with this kind of scenes in general ;@; please give me some feedback i literally feel like dying after writing this im going to hell ;@;;


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